Guild Wars 2

So far, I have three Coats from the event, three Shoulders from pods and two Gloves from pods.

Do helms, boots and pants drop from pods or am I doing somthing wrong? Do they drop less?

MikeyGrey.2496:

You have to complete all the pre-meta events for the lane that you want achievement for. Then stay in the map, defend that lane and kill the gerent for that lane. Best start right after a meta completes.

Are you speaking from experience post-patch or quoting another source?

(I wouldn’t be surprised if you were right though, I believe there’s an achieve for defending a post in VB that you have to be there the whole night cycle for. I haven’t done that one, nor do I plan on it. I also don’t plan on sitting in TD for two hours for each lane achieve.)

MikeyGrey.2496:

You have to complete all the pre-meta events for the lane that you want achievement for. Then stay in the map, defend that lane and kill the gerent for that lane. Best start right after a meta completes.

Are you speaking from experience post-patch or quoting another source?

(I wouldn’t be surprised if you were right though, I believe there’s an achieve for defending a post in VB that you have to be there the whole night cycle for. I haven’t done that one, nor do I plan on it. I also don’t plan on sitting in TD for two hours for each lane achieve.)

It is hard to open the chest at the end. I lost count of the number of times I clicked on it to open, and you need to open it to get the Mistward item (at least I had to a couple of weeks ago when I got it). It does open eventually – look in your inventory to see if you got a Chak Egg or not. You should always get an Egg from the chest.

I did the SCAR lane a couple of nights ago after the patch and did the SCAR lane in three phases. I’m pretty sure I got solid hits on the rushes and everything, still didn’t get the Defender title though. So even if it requires people to be less efficient to do all three phases, it still doesn’t work.

Glad to see this in action. Was simply not fun to spend all the time waiting for event repeatedly with little chance of success. I’ve been avoiding this meta for a while since finally winning once a ways back. Other events were more enjoyable and rewarding for time involved for open world stuff.

Eh, it is what it is. They’ve substituted content for “achievements” and “collections” for the most part to keep maps populated with people all going for various goals that require similar activities, thus the events get done. On the one hand, it’s pretty neat to do all the various event chains and participate in all of the storylines in the maps. On the other hand it can get boring to watch the same movie or read the same book 5 times, each time from a different character’s perspective.

The maps are gorgeous. Love the new gameplay, wish there was more of it in the expansion. But at the same time, the cost is decent. You’ll get the same game time out of it as you would many other games out there. Unfortunately they set the bar high with more bang for your buck early on and that’s what everyone was expecting.

On the plus side, you can take a break for a while and come back without missing too much.

I’ve read some and skimmed over most of the responses here, I expect mine will be taken as a grain of salt by most as well, BUT…

Who. Cares.

Unless you’re applying to ArenaNet for a job.

(almost) EVERY company in America is trying to do more with less. I wear five different hats at my job because as people leave, I get to do their jobs in addition to the one(s) I’m already doing. “Upstairs” too amibitious? Yeah, that’s their job.

What matters is the product. Everyone here’s acting like they know everything on management, and I’m sure several of you do, but what it all boils down to (unless you’re employed by them or seeking employment) is whether or not the product sells. It ain’t a charity.

Let’s use the forums to discuss the actual product/game?

1) What is your favorite part in the HoT Personal Story?

I enjoyed VB mostly.

2) What Specialization have you tried so far? Which is your favorite? What one will you try next?

Druid, Chrono, and Dragon Hunter. I like the Chrono the best, but my ranger is my Main with all of the PvE accomplishments. I don’t really use the Druid spec for general PvE content (HoT or otherwise – I did druid up on my one and only Raid attempt with a pug, and will druid again in Raids in the future)

3) What is your favorite event or map in HoT?

Favorite event & map is DS, hands down. It’s fun, it’s a whole map effort with high enough success rate and XP to make it feel like you’re accomplishing something and the final fight makes it feel like you’re on the epic quest you’re supposed to be on.

4) Are there any other areas you are excited by? PvP? Fractals? WvW? Guild Halls? Masteries? Raids?

Haven’t done any of the new PvP mode since beta, or the Fractals. Guild Halls are huge and imposing. Raids look interesting. I enjoy the masteries themselves but not the amount of grind to level them up.

5) What are you most looking forward to now?

Taking a break from trying too long and hard to get the TD meta done (which I did, eventually!)

Going to be returning to WvW soon and checking out new PvP mode and Raids again at some point.

Just did another one, 3/4 with Ogres failing at 2-3%. It was mostly pug, but lane comms were mostly guild and everyone seems to know what they were doing. Like Daniel, I do actually like this map. Something tells me it would be perfect for 4×17 man groups but that never happens in reality with the open world aspect. I wonder if the beta testing of the meta was a closed map with just one guild as well so a few calculations might have been missed.

It’s doable. It’s completely random chance of success though depending on the map. 25-ish times and I’ve killed gherent in my lanes many times only for things to fail elsewhere. And the lanes I’ve been in that have failed are mostly a scaling issue. Never had a successful map yet.

Oh, we still try. Guilds are formed trying to beat this. And non-guild non-cooperative randoms greatly hurt the attempts. Really screwed up for an MMO – both the punishment for helping out with more people as well as the lack of cooperation from many randoms.

I tried not to rant too much… I am very frustrated at this point. But I do feel my points are valid, that it’s not designed to account for human behavior.

I am not complaining about empty maps. I am not complaining about not being able to do this event without organization.

I do have a commander’s tag and I have stepped up to the plate to lead lanes. I have led and followed in lanes in both pug and guild maps. Did this event multiple times multiple days this week as well. 25+ attempts by now I think. I have not beaten it yet. I’ve done every lane though.

It’s Bad Design or Broken.

The primary issue is the scaling in the meta based on people within proximity of the event in each lane. The closest I have come is with 3/4 down and 1% or less left on Ogres – and that was due to Ogres having a crapload of unaccounted for people and people coming over from other lanes at the end. I’ve also been in two other maps that completed 3/4 and had SCAR down to 15%. I’ve noticed that a lot of people have finally caught on to Nuhoch lane so that lane isn’t as much of an issue as it has been in the past, but that also gets screwed when people pop in unanounced.

You can have a perfectly organized set of squads and suddenly have 5-10 randoms show up in your lane and screw it all up. This is NOT good design. Good design is adjusting your scaling to accomodate for this. Good design in an OPEN WORLD EVENT would encourage more people to join in the lane to help out, not punish.

I understand the desire to force people to work together, but this Doesn’t Happen in open world events. Yesterday in one run no one tagged on Ogres, so I finally did with half hour to go. I begged for flippin’ 15-20 minutes and got 5 people in my squad for my troubles. Then I moved out to the lane and told everyone the run down on the lane. Then all of a sudden I had 26 people in and out of squad. And little or no time for half of them to know what the hell was going on, even with me listing out all the information in chat again.

This meta does NOT accomodate for human behavior and does not belong in the Open World like this. Right now it’s an RNG Meta.

If you are one of those people who don’t communicate or cooperate with people trying to organize, you’re hurting us all. Hate to say that, but this is in HoT for pete’s sake, it’s not like we just started playing yesterday. The people trying to organize are trying to help the whole map.

This week was my big week to play this map alot. I no longer have that time available. This is NOT a well designed meta.

I have all the MP’s I need for the 4 main HoT mastery lines without getting gold on these (not sure about the raid related masteries, haven’t looked into that yet). So it’s not a burning need right now, but I’ve tried the ones the OP listed and there does seem to be something really off about the mechanics and/or time limit requirements.

If gold is achievable in these then there’s some trick I haven’t found yet. Or my reaction time and click-twitch skills have slowed down too much with age to get it.

At least they do have some easier ones to get gold in, like Salvage Pit, Drone Race, Wings of Gold, Beetle Feast.

Thanks for posting this, much appreciated

I like how the Rifle and Golem ones are. I’m fine with having to go through PvE-land to access them.

Locking behind the meta is unnecessary though, the Adventures should be accessible as a quick/short-play time experience for those without the time for chains.

They have nothing to do with the meta or anything else on the maps so making player wade through event chains for these 2- and 3-minute mini games doesn’t make a lot of sense.

If the Adventure doesn’t use a shared resource (be it a picked up item or a creature to kill) then I’m fine with others being there too. I’ve learned a few things on the Sanctum Scramble and Fungus Among Us this way. That also allows people to ‘guide’ friends or guildies through the races.

I’ve now tried out all of the Adventures and they’re OK. Some are fun, some are annoying, but that’s fine with me. Can’t make everyone happy and it’s fun to try out different things outside your comfort zone every now and then.

But I would really like to see a different approach on the next round of Adventures, if there is one. My thumbs are sore and my spacebar’s unhappy right now due to the constant jump and rush of the current Adventures. 4 Golds, rest Silver except for the Shooting Gallery that I’ve done twice and it’s always locked out when I think to go check again.

Factions had that one 8-man instance where the goal was to kill as many of the Afflicted as you could and it has a ‘soft’ time limit. IIRC the time extended each time you killed a boss.

Nightfall had that fun solo Wurm-version of Pac Man in the desert lands that I thought was extremely fun and replayable.

The current round of Adventures are all very fast and very short and rely heavily on twitch reactions. The main PvE of Guild Wars 2 doesn’t rely on these skills so much (at least in standard game play).

I don’t think I’m alone when I say that I’d really enjoy different types of Adventures that use play styles and skills more akin to standard game play but offer a leaderboard so players and teams can ‘compete’ to be the best at the challenge. Would be nice to have challenges that have more problem solving aspects without giving the player 0.5 seconds to hit a button (the mushroom cap hop drives me bonkers, seems I’m a small minority on that though).

Perhaps something like a constantly moving maze with bosses hidden in certain areas that give you more time on the clock if you defeat them? Add a level or two to the labyrinth with access holes in various locations. Leaderboard would go by number of levels deep the person or party went and how many kills.

Happened again in VB. Trying for Flying Circus. Nightfall after two runs. I had a little forewarning this time I guess. But I’m still contributing zip to the metas.

/sigh.

I got 1:32 about fifteen minutes later and got the silver chest. I was having a hard time with that Cap Hop sometimes not doing the first “hop” and at the end the cap hop target distance seemed inconsistent. Very short time frame to target that hop

Just had a great Sanctum Scramble run. Fell at the very end. Tried to Reset and do it again. It wouldn’t let me because the main map event have just started.

Just let us play the Adventures if we’re already in them….

I’m not contributing to the map effort anyways when I’m doing these things so they’re counterproductive to the map population the way they are with map limits, etc.

Also – 1:40 is not silver in Fungus Among Us. My wife can attest to the fact that I tried extremely hard to get to 1:40… and didn’t get silver. Because she heard all the nice things I had to say about fungi afterwards.

Without making a list and going into much detail…

The Good is that it’s FUN. It’s a fun game if you don’t pick it apart and take it for what it is. I’ve gotten more hours out of it already than several other games I’ve paid $50 for. I love the music, the story was short but decent, nice to do a little something else with my main. Lovely maps. Love the new mechanics and Adventures. For as much as I’ve griped about things, it’s properly priced.

The Bad is the time investment and not enough down-time / non-meta maps mixed in with the metas. I work hard, I spend time with my family but I’ve also been burning the candle at both ends playing HoT while player populations are high and people are working out the mechanics (did DS with a guild that was doing it first time, etc, the fun stuff before assigned roles/actions turn the event into a routine). I’ve been trying to get the hours-long-sessions out of the way (the event lines) so that I just have stuff like a mastery point or two and the Adventures left. Stuff that I can just log in, play, and log out with. The sheer amount of time required to do the events or have maps cycle through to get to the start of event chains in order to get mastery points is OK for one map. Maybe two. But all four? If it’s going to be four, then at least give us some non-meta maps to have fun in without the maps being all stressed out about some meta or the other. Same with the XP grind. Provide different opportunities/maps to XP grind the Masteries with. Oh, and they just threw the elite specs in without really giving them a proper introduction into the game lore. I believe that’s been mentioned elsewhere on the forum.

But… for the price it is what it is. If we paid a monthly sub then I would not be thrilled.

P.S. I do wish people would stop complaining about the difficulty. It’s an expansion and that assumes that you’ve played the preceding content and learned the necessary skills. You just need to apply them differently with the new encounters. I recall people complaining when Factions came out as well. I’m sure everyone will quiet down soon enough though. I hope they don’t nerf things too much in the meantime. If something’s bugged, that’s another story.

Zamfir.8462:

Yes, I’ve seen this many times, especially where people ask in map chat for help doing a difficult HP. “Only do HP at (night / day)” “If you can’t help with the meta, get off the map!”

I think what made it work well in SW was the fact that the whole map was one event. I guess you could argue the JP in SW was something else to do, but it didn’t take significant numbers away from the main effort. If players need to be on the same map to get things like hero points and mastery points that are required to progress their character, then it’s setting the main event up for failure.

The problem is the TD meta takes so much effort from everyone. I was in one TD organized map that just barely failed because lack of dps on one of the lanes. The other two finished. I also think it’s a bit rude to tell people to leave, and I personally just keep doing whatever I’m doing until it’s time to start. I’m not sitting around for an hour doing nothing in TD waiting for it to happen (but I still read the comm chats and know what to do when the time comes).

Just so happens that I logged in to the last two Ogre events and those were the ones.

Sent you a pm… can’t seem to get the [ spoiler ] thing working right on post.

Ayrilana.1396:

Just the checklist not showing is bugged.

Yeah, that’s what I’m wondering. I’m ok with not having it completed yet but I don’t know which part I’m missing. Would be nice to just do those two missing parts if I don’t have time to do the full chain and I’m on at an opportune time.

So is that one not displaying the checklist for you either?

I thought I did all of the Ogre events, but apparently not. The Honorary Ogre achievement panel just says “4/6”. By contrast, the other similar achievements like SCAR Supporter list each event so I know what’s missing.

Is this a bug on my end or are other people missing the Honorary Ogre details? Is this an oversight by the devs?

It is nice to see the listings on similar achievements so I can get the most of my time playing. Takes a long time to get the event chains done as it is and sometime I just don’t have the time to wait for one or two parts to come up or for things to cycle through.

But the actual Mastery Points and additional Hero Points are in the jungle so you still need to do the HoT content all the same. Many drops are still needed from HoT bosses and items collected which require local currency.

IMO the SW map was a fast xp location primarily due to the fact that everyone was playing on it for lack of other new content at the time. Events were successful because there really weren’t many, the outposts and caravans so it was very focused.

Dry top by contrast has many different smaller events sporadically placed all over the map. But again, I think it was busy because it was the new thing.

Again, i’m not looking for easier. I do a lot of HoT in zerkers… but a change a scenery would be nice.

I don’t see those two maps as being any more farmable than the HoT maps to be honest. Just adjust some of the event rewards or event frequency to comparable levels in SW/DT if there’s that much of a descrepancy.

p.s. not looking for easy road, looking for a little more variety aside from four maps. I don’t think I expressed any discontent about pacing.

I’m working on the HoT Masteries. It’s ‘ok’ at this point. Two of them are level four, the rest are at level 2. Right now I’m pecking away at Nuhoch level 3. I don’t expect to be done any time soon.

While I haven’t done every little questline, it would be nice to get HoT Mastery XP in another map.

I understand the need to keep the primary 4 HoT maps populated for the metas at least in the initial few weeks, but I would strongly suggest that the Devs adjust things so that Dry Top and Silverwaste XP contributes to the HoT Mastery progression at some point. They’re the prequel to HoT anyways, and when I’ve been in them the player population’s dwindled.

There’s plenty of sources for the Tyrian Mastery stuff, just would like a different spot to do stuff after X-number of hours in four maps for Masteries.

I’m not sure why it would be considered to be a problem. Raids = repetitive content in and of themselves. Unless you think you can just walk into a raid scenario and hit an “easy” button. Raids usually require hours, including proper preparation and planning and countless failed efforts because of wipes every time you run across a new mechanic and have to figure out a way past the obstacle. That’s hours spent on multiple days / weeks with an organized group or guild. Raids are not casual content.

Disconnected in one of the charr lands mid-hero-challenge fight about five minutes ago. I forget the error code. I get disconnect and network errors when I try to log back in as well, 32-bit client.

I’m trying the 64-bit client next. It’s still downloading a lot, probably additional files for the 64-bit client to work.

This is not a personal computer or home network issue. I haven’t crashed a single time in a long time and especially not since HoT was released.

Update: 64-bit client works fine. Whether it’s the client or a hiccup in the system, I’ll never know.

While I enjoy the expansion and do not regret purchasing, it does feel a bit short. If all of the Living Story elements were put together into this expansion instead of them being spaced out then it would feel more like a real expansion than DLC. Whether or not all of the content was there with the LS + HoT isn’t the point, it’s the player experience that determines whether or not there was enough for it to be considered a real expansion.

I greatly enjoy games that I can play start to finish. Then I’ll go back and play the fun parts over again. Having the LS stretched out like it was and then BOOM! it finishes was a bit anti-climatic. I did really enjoy the expansion’s content so far though. I thought the Dragon Stand fight was more exciting than the storyline to be honest. But I really enjoyed the DS fight, being on a TS with a guild who’d never done it before so it was all new to everyone.

There’s still more to come, though, with the raids and LS3 etc.

Thought I’d chime in on this as well.

I’ve liked the music for the main GW1 and GW2 games before, but the music really stands out in this game. Love the variety and the subtle nuances and various instruments being used together. There’s one track in Dragon Stand or Tangled Depths I think, out of combat, that’s very playful and light that sounds great. And the DS end fight music is right on.

And… whoever voiced the dragon was great. Especially liked the layover of the multiple voices at a certain point towards the end.

My wife even likes listening to the music while I play! And that’s… just wow…

Blackanthem.1603:

Btw, the living world season 2 was completely free if you were playing when it released so if you’re playing when future LW episodes come out, it’ll most likely be free for you =)

Been true in the past, but whether or not it remains true in the future will depend on whether or not someone upstairs changes their mind again. We’ll see.

Dagnar Stonepate, anyone?

It does feel like DLC, but a large meaty chunk of DLC at least. I feel that I’m going to get my money’s worth out of it as long as they continue to put in LS elements and upgrades as time goes on without additional cost (until the next substantial xpac). As per that line about all future LS updates requiring HoT, I see the $50 as a season pass.

That said, I’m not going to buy any more gems for the game (and haven’t since they announced HoT). I’ll use my game budget to pay for the expansions instead.

I agree with some others above. Last night I just respec’d back to good old fashioned Ranger. Even in the last PvE map of Dragon Stand I found no real benefit for the druid. This is also in pug and zerg scenarios, though. If you’re in a tight guild or organized group there might be a good role for the druid.

That tiger’s a pretty nice addition to the ranger as well.

Three minute delay? When we only have 15 minutes to explore? Sigh. Maybe that’s why I didnt see it when I got the wyvern.

I did this in a pug map today and we alllmost won. Should be more possible on a regular basis in a few weeks. I still think it should only one pet locked behind the event, not both. Would be cool if wyvern was this map’s ‘prize’ and the tiger was after another map’s meta. Mix it up a bit.

I did poke around while the event was on the Big Bad and did not see any juvies, so we probably need a total win. On that note, if one of them was available at the midway point that would still be a little better.

Ouch. I’m fine with a pet being gated behind a major event. But not two for the same event… I got the electric and now I’m kicking myself for not finding the tiger in that short window of time we have after the event. I just assumed the tiger was gated behind a different event, not the same one. Plenty of time for people to get the event sorted out at least.

I think it’s fine. Gives people something to shoot for. It reminds me of the UW spider. Also, I completed Dragon Stand the other night when I fell into a guild run map and I can see the event being completed on a regular basis soon enough.

It’s a nice special reward for rangers I think.

With raids planned for the future, I put together a set of Nomad’s armor and stuck Druid runes on it. Haven’t had the time yet to test it out on my druid, but I was wondering if anyone else had the same idea or if anyone had yet encountered a situation where this was worth it?

I healed a lot in GW1 and other games so I’m expecting to be put in back- to mid-line healer role for raids in the future. Seems like the Toughness would be solid to have for personal defense and our damage would be negligible anyhow in a raid.

(Obviously, nomads + druid doesn’t work in most of pve-land)

I logged in about 2 and a half hours ago, but now I can’t. :/ I didn’t have any dc issues when I was able to log in though.

I start up my game client, but don’t even get to the Login screen. It starts downloading right away. Usually not a problem.

First time I tried, it went up to around 7,000 KB downloaded and froze. Second time it went to 9,000 KB and froze. I walked away and it’s back to downloading. Just froze at 10,215 KB.

No notes online or posts on the facebook page or here about this.

What’s happening?

thanks! I didn’t know it was unlocked automatically…

Nope. It’s my main for PvE and has all the good stuff on it.

Two days isn’t going to make me quit my favorite class for PvE, stop being so dramatic

Celestial Duration is too short, yes. I also feel there should be more of a toughness or protection buff for the ranger in Celestial, feels like a glass healer unless you armor up for it fully and if you armor up for it fully then you’re not going to do much in damage during the fights that you don’t need the heals for. BUT – you can change armor and build on the fly in-game so you can prep for each encounter in an organized run in theory.

I also used to monk alot in GW1 so it’s hybrid of the two for me. Still too early to determine full effectiveness though.

I haven’t played much in the beta. This past weekend was the first one I participated in… sort of. I’m perfectly fine with waiting to experience a new game when it launches. All I did this weekend was create a Dragonhunter, Druid, Rev, and Chronomancer to take a peek at how the theory of these highly touted new specializations and the rev play out in practice.

I was honestly let down overall with the class upgrades. On the one hand, I like new skills. We desperately need them. We need more to do with our characters than play the same builds every day/scenario. What I wasn’t a planning on was how short of a time span you had to actually use the new special stuff . Chronomancer’s time-rift thing for four seconds, tops? Really? And the druid… seems like an inconsistent burst heal? The Rev was ok. I could dig that, the you didn’t have such a brief time to use the new cool stuff. As for the Dragonhunter… I think by that time I just got tired of reading paragraphs of skill tool tips and figuring things out.

New places to play in, great. I dig that.

But I think that someone somewhere was trying to get too “clever” with the skills. I much prefer the good old fashioned “Heals X Players by Y amount over Z seconds”. The new skills overall just looked like they were made too complicated for what they were.

I’m sure my opinion will change a little during actual play when things go live. But I do hope the very short time spans to use some of these skills is made to last a bit longer so you can really use them.

nexxe.7081:

Why are people so dismissive of the OP? It’s a legit concern. Anet seems to think quantity > quality.

I agree, somewhat. What the OP’s really pointing out is power creep, reward creep, whatever you want to call it. Too many collectables, currencies, tokens, etc. when I’d love to play more engaging pve content. You still want to collect the loot though because of that 0.5% chance you’ll get something that your character can actually use. Honestly, if you’ve play long enough then you’ve got most everything you need anyhow and the rest is fluff.

I still think GW1 had more fun replayable exporables and instances. GW2 does have a more fun pvp system though. I enjoy the WvW mostly and EoTM in particular for a while now because I can hop in after a long work/family day and duke it out with people or cap stuff in a zerg without waiting too long (or having to run across EB to reach them).

I admit, I’ve actually preordered at this point, despite my previous kittening about Anet’s poor marketing and business practices. Their marketing and changing their minds is still irritating, but I’ll put $50 out for the expansion. I just wish I’d known about it before making my support via gems before the expac was announced (which is my primary issue with them… I supported them via gems and then they announced the expac which they said they wouldn’t do…. but that’s another kitten session) With my kid and life in general, I don’t have time to learn and get into a new game right now or any time soon. I’m not expecting it to be worth $50 to start. We’ll see. But I’d like to kill people in wvw in a new map for once.

Vix.6730:

The Steam Summer Sale has been amazing. I picked up a slew of great games at 60-80% off, spending less than $20 in total. Arkham Knight looks like it’ll be stupendous.

Yeah. I think tomorrow’s last day for it, right? Picked something up for less than $10 that’s pretty fun.

Pretty Pixie.8603:

Edit: there is no free content. If you never spend a dime in the genstore and played the living story ‘for free’, you played something that was paid for by veterans through gemstore purchases.

This. I’ve spent plenty more than the Expansion cost in gems because I wanted to support the game (before the expansion was announced, when we didn’t think there would be one…) You’re welcome, to the people who paid the initial game cost and nothing more. The expansion is simply not worth $50 and I don’t like the chronic inconsistency. There are two factors at play here: “perceived value” and good/bad faith in operations.

Anyhow, I’ve started playing a new game this week, quite happy with it now. Checking here to see if there’s any update but I see none.

Or you could just uninstall the game now. I uninstalled a few hours ago. Granted, it’s not a subscription so you can just reinstall and play again, but I’m basically not going to play it for a nice while. I figure if a miracle occurs and HoT is a resounding success and I have the extra cash I might poke my head in to see what the fuss is about.

(this is probably my last post here unless they make some great big reveal that justifies the cost and no, you can’t have my stuff – my characters need it in the afterlife).

Sadly, I had made my monetary contribution to Anet in the form of gems just before they announced an expansion. See, I believed what they said about no expansions and adding on through living story updates, etc. Their communication with their player base sucks. So – I bought a significant amount of gems thinking I’d pitch in to the game and not worry about paying more for content, etc.

Then the expansion was announced and I thought “crap, I’ve already spent what I was going to pay towards the game” and I played a bit less, but didn’t write it off. I eventually figured, fine, it was my fault for assuming the interviews and such were gospel and I should have known they’d switch stance on their business model at some point. After a while I came to the conclusion that sure, I’d buy the expansion. I just wouldn’t buy anything else until then.

Then this happens. I’ve seen nothing that justifies kitten price tag for the new content. Like another poster said elsewhere, they’ve padded at least $10 into the $50 for new players to have the base game. Nothing is ever “free” in business and if you believe otherwise then you’re living in a fantasy world (…) The fact that I’ve given money to the company to help pay for it means nothing at this point. I’m being expected to fork out $50 for a sub-standard amount of content. Not even an additional character slot as a carrot to lead me on.

I think at the heart of it, I’m just too tired of Anet shifting their stance on everything. I’ve thought they have no idea what they’re doing before and I keep thinking that every time they change things around… again… and I think I’ve hit my limit this time.

$50 can buy a whole new game with new worlds to explore.